Friday, January 2, 2009

The Psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist is the care of the
                    Patient.
The psychiatrist thanks and thinks about
                        the patient.
The psychiatrist thinks and protects the
              words of the patient.

Translated by Gary Sullivan.

* * *

Der Psychiater.

Der Psychiater ist der Sorge des
                    Patienten.
Der Psychiater dankt und denkt über
                        den Patienten.
Der Psychiater denkt and schützt die
              Worte des Patienten.

* * *

Notes

The translation of this poem in In the Realms of the Unreal renders the first line:

The psychiatrist takes care of the
                    the patient.

which seems overly normalized unless I'm completely confused (a definite possibility).

UPDATE: I had translated that first line as "The psychiatrist is the concern of the patient," which Ekkehard Knörer has written in to suggest might itself be more normal sounding than the German. So at his suggestion I have changed it to "is the care of ..."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This definitely is over-normalized, and very much so. It's really very strange in German and you could perhaps even try something like "the psychiatrist is the care of the patient"; it's as bizarre in German, and "für jemanden sorgen" is "to take care of", "to care about s.o."; "der Sorge" does not exist and could possibly also be translated by "the carer"

Gary said...

Aha ... great. Thank you, once again Ekkehard ... I'm going to go back to this one in a moment ...